ANA HD introduces Travel Wellness initiative

ANA Holdings, the parent company of Japanese airline ANA, is introducing a new programme to help passengers ‘recharge’ in-flight and improve the travel experience.

Through the programme, ANA Travel Wellness, the company aims to resolve the negative connotations passengers may have with flying and begin initiatives to help passengers to be at their best physical and mental states during flights, “and potentially be in even better shape than they were before boarding the flight,” the company said.

“ANA HD realizes that many travelers fear long flights due to potential side effects such as jetlag, fatigue or lack of sleep,” said Yoshiaki Tsuda, vice-president, ANA Digital Design Lab. “These negative notions deter some passengers from taking longer flights. To address these issues, ANA HD has been working to create the ANA Travel Wellness initiative. This idea was first expressed more than 10 years ago by Yoji Ohashi, senior advisor to the Board of ANA HD and former chairman and CEO of ANA.”

ANA HD is working with a research team led by Professor Ichiro Kawachi, chair of the department of social and behavioural sciences at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, to review evidence and investigate perceptions and determinants of jetlag among US and Japanese passengers travelling in Business Class.

ANA HD has also conducted surveys about jetlag to gather additional information and plans to publish the results in academic journals.

The wellbeing initiatives will initially focus on athletes who are often required to be in their peak condition upon arrival.

App-y flying

The first initiative will be the creation of a mobile app to relieve the feeling of jetlag.

The app will be made in conjunction with NeuroSpace, a start-up company creating measures to advance the quality of sleep and the pair are looking into the scientific cause of jetlag in order to help alleviate the symptoms or prevent them from occurring.

Test trials of the app will be conducted on certain ANA HD employees and passengers travelling internationally and ANA HD aims to officially start offering this service in April 2019.

In a statement the company said its goal is to “increase the affinity for air travel and challenge ourselves daily in an endeavour to capture latent customer needs.”